Over the next few seconds, a sweet scent drifted through August's nose. Jafeila hummed lightly.
He pushed onward into her essence. Her power surrounded him.
It seemed to caress him, welcoming him in. In reality, it was a threat.
If he misstepped, her power would try to crush him in defense. The binding stone could protect him, but he was still in danger.
Eventually, he reached her core. Slowly, he drew on the piece of magic that he had brought with him from the binding stone.
Then he cast the enhancement ritual on Jafeila.
How many times had he done this? Never to Jafeila. But dozens to other Champions.
But in this timeline, this enhancement ritual was his first. That made it special.
After a minute, the ritual was done, and August withdrew from Jafeila's essence.
She stood in the same place as before, but her body was noticeably looser. A cheerful grin spread across her face, her palms were open, and she swayed from side to side.
A light moan leaked from her lips.
"How are you doing, Jafeila?" August asked, trying to bring her back to reality.
"Fei," she mumbled, staring at him with glazed eyes. "Call me Fei. I don't like being called Jafeila."
'You don't?' He arched a curious brow. That was news to him. In his timeline, it had been the opposite.
Everybody else called her Fei, and he called her Jafeila at her request.
He hid a frown at the deviation from his memories and nodded.
That sweet scent lingered in his mind, slowly fading away. "So, how are you doing, Fei?" he repeated.
"Umm, getting there?" Fei said. She shook herself out, her tail waving back and forth out of sync from the rest of her body.
"Wow. I can't imagine what that must be like if you enhanced a guy. I thought my books exaggerated things." A blush crossed her face, but she grinned at him regardless.
"There's a reason Champions are almost always the opposite gender to the Bastion, or at least a matching gender preference," August said drily.
"Gender preference?"
"I'll tell you when you're older."
She scowled at him. "I'm an adult."
That he knew, in more ways than one. And he was very thankful for it, given the way his body was reacting to the sweet scent she had let off during the ritual.
"Of course you are," he said with a grin. He reached out to ruffle her hair.
She darted back in a blur, taking several steps faster than he could blink.
Then she froze and looked down at the ground. "Oh. Oh my goddess," she said.
She ran forward and nearly bowled August over with her speed. "I'm so faaaaaaaast!"
With those last words, Fei became a black blur charging across the valley toward the demons.
August pumped some magic into his eyes so he could keep up with her movements.
The demons looked up, their massive eyes narrowing and focusing in on the strange blur charging right at them.
One of them bellowed, leaping up and hefting an axe the size of a man.
Too late. Fei whirled behind him. The hand gripping the axe began to fall, almost in slow motion. The demon's eyes widened. He screamed.
Fei's scimitar ripped right into his groin, then tore upward. The demon screeched.
August looked away for a second, not wanting to watch what came next.
Except the demons kept bellowing, and Fei let out a shriek.
Looking back, August saw that Fei's sword was stuck. She rolled back, leaving her scimitar buried halfway up the torso of one demon, who had keeled over in the dirt.
The other demon slammed a two-handed hammer into the ground.
Each strike left small craters in the rock. A single hit from that would cave open Fei's skull.
As a Champion, she would survive it, and August had access to basic healing from the binding stone, but he didn't want her take that much damage in her first fight.
He reached for the longsword at his hip. Before he could draw it, Fei pulled a dagger from her belt.
She darted in, dodged the demon's blow, and slashed open its neck twice. Blood fountained out, but the demon only staggered.
Too shallow.
Fei noticed. She spun around. The demon turned, hefting its hammer into the air.
A human warrior, and even a Champion, would have been slowed by a major wound like that. Not a demon.
They felt pain, but wounds didn't slow them. Nobody understood why they even had internal organs, given they didn't use them.
Puncture a demon's heart and it fought on, as if it had been tickled.
The only way to kill a demon was through sheer bodily damage. Cut them open, slash off their limbs, smash them, blow them up, pelt them with magic.
Anything worked, so long as she physically damaged their body enough that they eventually died.
Fei hurled her dagger at the demon. It slammed right into its eye and the demon froze. Then it shouted and charged forward.
She scowled, grabbed another dagger, and met its charge.
Three charges. That's what it took. Each time, she slashed its chest open and darted aside before it crushed her with its hammer.
Eventually, the demon collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
After retrieving her scimitar from the gory mess she had made of thebfirst demon, Fei waited for August to walk up to her.
"I know. I messed up," she mumbled.
August ruffled her hair. She let out a squeak, her ears pricking up around his hand, before flattening under his attention.
"This is normal for your first battle. Demons are the primary threat to the world for a reason.
If they were easy to defeat, we wouldn't need so many Bastions and Champions, would we?"
"I guess not."
"Take out the three in the clearing, and you'll feel better," he suggested.
This fight went more smoothly. Fei didn't lose her scimitar and kept her attacks more reserved.
She struck at their limbs, slipping in and out of the demons' reach with her superior speed before they could react.
By the end of the fight, she had collected a hand from each one, and was sawing off the head of another.
"Do you need the head?" August asked as he approached.
"I figure a huge demonic goat head makes for a better trophy than some hands. And this guy is the biggest of the lot." Fei grinned up at August.
Her face, fur, and hair were liberally covered in blood from the battle.
Not that it bothered him. Blood-covered Champions were a common sight.
If anything, this was a nostalgic sight. He had first met Fei in the aftermath of her slaughtering countless demons.
She hadn't been so cheerful about killing demons back then, however.
"We'll find somewhere for you to put it. For now, let's head back and clean up," he said.
Fei looked at him in confusion. Then at herself. "Oh. Right. Clean would be good."
Then she followed his gaze and her eyes landed on her tail. Her scream echoed throughout the empty valley.